Among the Auckland Festival's range of kids' fare is Fluff, a spooky comedy of vintage soft toy appreciation from sometime Kransky Sister Christine Johnson. She talks to REBECCA BARRY
If the secret life of toys sounds a little freaky - after all, there's a certain generation terrified by memories of Chucky from Child's Play and Pennywise from It - you may need to hold someone's hand throughout Australian performer Christine Johnson's Auckland Festival family show, Fluff.
"It is kinda spooky," she laughs. "I like things that are slightly spooky. I have a ventriloquist doll that people tell me is spooky. But that's why I got one."
Johnson is one third of the Kransky Sisters, the Addams Family-like musical trio of spinsters whose comedy lies in their gothic eccentricity, so it's easy to presume that extends to this latest stage incarnation, with dancer Lisa O'Neill and musician Peter Nelson. But this time Johnson plays a kind woman who provides a home for lost toys. Fluff has never been known to scare the kids, she says. It's the adults who possess those dark thoughts. But they tend to like Fluff too.
Although she has left behind the black wig belonging to Eve Kransky, if there's a similarity between the shows it's a sense of nostalgia, which she's combined with the use of lighting and new technologies.
"I've always been interested in the new but I wanted to incorporate the old. I love the pace, the simplicity of the old. I hope we never lose it."
The show is vaguely autobiographical in that Johnson has been collecting handmade toys for years. Some come from second-hand shops, others have fallen out of prams. She used to keep them all over the house. "I wonder about their history, where they come from."
Perhaps it's no surprise to see old-fashioned, handmade teddies gracing the windows of upmarket gift shops, a craving for the romanticism of yesteryear, an innocent time when our favourite toys were scruffy, well-worn individuals rather than mass-produced plastic clones.
Fluff is a gentle reminder that fun doesn't necessarily have to come from a PlayStation, although Johnson says she likes gadgets herself, as long as they spark a child's imagination. She had a Barbie and a GI Joe and used to push Matchbox cars around imaginary cities. But what sticks in her mind most are the little felt toys her aunt made.
"I always feel sad wondering where they went. They were completely original." She particularly likes handmade toys because they are "created by someone out of love for someone".
For Fluff, she has selected 10 "star" toys. One of her favourites is a teddy she named Joy because "as soon as I looked at her face, I almost cried with joy. She was so sweet. She gave me a hopeful feeling. She has a beautiful expression that said so much about how I hope to feel."
Johnson will incorporate a good old-fashioned slide show to explain how each toy was lost. And it wouldn't be a Christine Johnson show without a bit of human-generated noise. In her strangely synaesthetic world, textures have specific sounds. When she invites the younger members of her audience on stage to introduce their own toys, she'll also ask them to make the sound they associate with the toy's texture. The idea came from her childhood, when
she and her younger sister created a secret language.
"I had a great childhood. I draw inspiration from that feeling of space. I grew up in a place with lots of room, in the outer suburbs in a semi-rural area. We had a lot of time to delve into our imaginations - it was never discouraged. I also love looking into the faces of things, discovering their personalities."
AUCKLAND FESTIVAL
What: Fluff
Where and when: Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall, March 12-15; tickets $15-$25 from www.the-edge.co.nz.
Workshop: Christine Johnson will also host a Fluff Workshop, March 14 at 2-3pm. Children are invited to explore the personalities of their favourite or strangest toy through music, movement and sound. Tickets are $10 from workshops@aucklandfestival.co.nz. For ages 5-8.
